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20 May 2015

Not much is said in Western media about some excesses of Russian new wave of ultra-patriotism. This wave seems to be drowning any sign of protest about the Russian piecemeal absorption of Ukrainian territory. It also reached some hitherto unseen heights of unbridled profanity, as it could be seen in the picture below.

The text on the rear window says:

Will buy the skin off Obama's arse. Dearly [meaning the author is ready to pay a lot].

This "ad" appeared on a Hummer that was seen circling the streets of Pyatigorsk on May 9 (the Soviet/Russian Victory day) among many other cars carrying all kinds of patriotic and, in many cases, xenophobic slogans.

The ownership of the car [aside of the irony of the car being of American extraction, which fact escaped the attention of its owner] is of interest in this case. According to the article that quotes some Pyatigorsk citizens, there are only two Hummers in the city, and the one in question belongs to one Daniil Travnev, head of the Pyatigorsk branch of the Russian Gazprom, the largest natural gas extraction company in the world.

Oh well, as the linked article properly mentions:

The reality of Putin's Russia are such that it has become a nature reserve for idiots.

Believe it or not, the presented "pearl" is on the mild side, compared to other, overtly racist curses directed at Obama particularly and at Americans in general.

19 May 2015

Once a ball player - forever a ball player, as this picture of the corpulent Hand of God conclusively proves. But really, I shouldn't be small minded here and pour my personal (Brazilian fan's) bile on the man. Besides, this post is not about balls at all. What you can see in this picture besides the rather awkward gesture is the two watches our protagonist is carrying. Why is it important? Because these watches are definitely not Rolex.

And why are they not Rolex? Because at the time when this picture was taken, Maradona was already Rolex-less, for a simple enough reason:

Diego Maradona had some time on his hands near Naples on Tuesday until Italy's tax police took two Rolex watches from the Argentine soccer legend to chip away at his $38.5 million bill in unpaid income taxes."We were surprised he was wearing them because he knows that when he comes to Italy he risks losing something," said Tax Police Maj. Geremia Guercia, speaking by phone from the Naples suburb of Giugliano In Campania.

On another occasion Italian Tax police took off his earrings as well, but this is really another story. So why, you might want to ask, I am rehashing the old (2006) scoop? Just because recently an historical fact came by (thanks to L.G.) that put the curious two-Rolex habit of Mr Maradona in a totally new light. It is not his vanity or his poor taste (although there is an abundance of both in this case) that have driven the Hand of God to that habit. It is his ideology and his boundless admiration for his role model: Fidel (The Beard) Castro. Here is the story:

Here Fidel Castro is seen smoking a Cuban cigar and wearing two Rolex watches in the Kremlin while he chats with Khrushchev, in front of a Karl Marx picture. ...Fidel Castro was often spotted wearing two Rolex’s at the same time – one of them a GMT, the other a Submariner. In total the watches gave Castro a three time zone overview by a glance on his wrist. The watches have been set for Havana, Washington and Moscow time.

There is one hardly significant detail: if you click on the picture you shall clearly see that The Beard wears both watches on the left hand, unlike the Hand of God who wears one watch on each hand. Well, this is easily explained - his hands are much shorter than these of The Beard, and two watches carried on one hand would have created a problem.

On the other hand (no pun intended), the Hand of God used his shortish appendages well enough - to the glory of himself and his team... 'nuff said.

18 May 2015

Russian PR isn't known for its subtlety. Beatification process of Valdimir Vladimirovich Putin is another example of the negative impact inflicted by the chronic state of hangover.

Here is what one of the Russian media outfits MKRU reported re the above picture:

Here is what the text above says (more or less):

Unexpectedly, the President appeared during the demo "Undying brigade". Like other citizens, he was carrying a portrait of his father, who fell in the war.

Just for the hell of it, the reader is invited to do some simple arithmetic: the war in question ended in 1945; Putin V.V. was (officially) born in 1952. Since at the time all these modern methods of freezing one's sperm and artificial insemination weren't in vogue, only one option, no matter how improbable, remains on the table...

Oh well, the story is surely being blown out of proportion, since Putin's dad didn't die in the war and the whole brouhaha is to remain on the conscience of one hapless reporter. Still, another question remains: according to the official Putin's bio, his dad fought in the war in the ranks of 86th infantry brigade. In the picture, however, he appears in Navy standard garb.

16 May 2015

Leading scientists of NASA expressed grave concern with the fate of Paektu Mountain, an active volcano and a famous nature phenomenon on the border between North Korea and China. After the historic ascent to the summit of the mountain by the corpulent North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, several geodetic satellites have shown that the height of the mountain has decreased by 25.4 cm (10.7874 inch).

An anonymous well-informed NASA expert commented:

The same geodetic satellites that measured the height of Paektu Mountain's summit are secretly measuring the dimensions of Mr Kim Jong Un, and the leading scientists are worried about the rapid increase in the said measurements. If the trend continues, another ascent or two by the man might cause irreparable loss to the fragile ecology of the whole region, including draining of the Heaven Lake, the source of Chinese rivers Songhua, Tumen and Yalu, not to mention the habitat for tigers, bears, leopards, wolves, wild boars and, most importantly, of scaly-sided mergansers.

As a response to the implied critique of one of his greatest feats, Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, first chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said:

We should dynamically conduct a drive of breaking through the cutting edge with intense loyalty and noble sense of moral obligation to further glorify the DPRK as a space power and thus hand down the undying feats of the Generalissimo to posterity.If the US imperialists threaten our sovereignty and survival... our troops will fire our nuclear-armed rockets at the White House and the Pentagon - the sources of all evil. The army and people of the DPRK who aspire after justice and truth and value conscience have hundreds of millions of supporters and sympathizers, known or unknown, who have turned out in the sacred war against terrorism and the U.S. imperialists, the chieftain of aggression, to accomplish the just cause.

In a shocking revelation at a special conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, it was revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister before the Islamic Revolution, asked Mossad agents in Tehran to assassinate the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Says Yossi Alpher, a former Mossad official:

I told the heads of the Mossad that I had difficulty supporting the request because we didn't know enough about who and what Khomeini was. I really regret not supporting that request.

15 May 2015

A source in the Knesset said in the evening that "what is happening here is a circus" after a last-minute crisis between Netanyahu and the two senior members of his faction led to the delay of the Knesset swearing in session.

So what else is new? Nothing much, and even this could hardly be considered news:

Prime Minsiter* Netanyahu, on his part, decried the system of government, saying it must be changed. "It encourages extravagant, excessive demands both by parties and by individuals," he said.

Yeah, all in all we might be better off with the Darwinian process of whittling out the weakest candidates like that one.

10 May 2015

Troll: a person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting.

Probably everyone who spent a sufficient amount of time on the Internet is familiar with all kinds of people blaming other kinds of people in being paid trolls for a cause. Of course, it is a standard and already quite overused coin in the anti-Zionist treasure of labels, addressed at anyone who dares to object to their vicious and, of course, totally voluntary, smearing efforts.

A real and, so far, devilishly effective, financed propaganda effort, that was undertaken in the latter years by the Russian government, so far remains mostly unheeded by the Western media. Not many people are aware of the role the Russian web brigades play in unprecedented popularity of the Russian president. You shall see that the Russians employ such trolls in languages other than Russian.

Exposure of this highly effective and so far unprecedented undertaking is a difficult task. It is thus of importance when the participants in this propaganda war disclose their work. The following article is translated from a Russian version by a blogger Piesdabolt.

The Polish edition of «Duży format» has published an extensive interview by journalist Lyudmila Anannikova with Marat and Lyudmila [in the picture above] - former employees of the Kremlin's "Ministry of Truth".

In order to become an employee of the St. Petersburg Internet Research, you have only to know the Russian language and to love Putin. Marat, 40-year-old bachelor from St. Petersburg, laughed at first at the texts that he wrote while working at the "Trolls Factory". Two months later he realized that he became a split personality. Lyudmila Savchuk, 34-year-old urban activist, went to work in the company to gather facts for journalists. She got to write blogs on behalf of fictitious persons.

08 May 2015

But there will be others who are already celebrating: the venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating. The hyena can bounce on the lion’s grave but it can never be a lion and in any case, I’m not in my grave. As a matter of fact I’m going off now to plan the next campaign.

Back to the regular programming:

But not before we parse the text above and notice that, probably because of the shock, George the Spiv forgot to mention the Texans. As he used to. So compare the above list of dark forces with this:

They’re all out tonight; the Tory vermin, the UKIP proto-fascists, their Scots counterparts, the actual fascists, even Texans!

07 May 2015

The sordid story starts with a +972 report on Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister public interview (conversation) with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius of April 29, 2015. Frankly, for some reason Ms Goldman has chosen not to use this opportunity to bash Israel and has even found some good reasons to (very gently) criticize Mr Zarif. Some ingrown journalistic habits die hard, it appears...

The immediate consequences of the story remain somewhat foggy. The Twitter sites I have checked: these of +972 and of Mohammad Javad Zarif are scrubbed clean and do not contain the initial response by Zarif to that article, but obviously he expressed some displeasure by the gentle criticism and found a way to convey the said displeasure. The response* by Ms Goldman is stunning :

To make sure the text in question doesn't disappear, here is a (manual) copy:

Just a correction, Your Excellency: my article for +972 Magazine is not angry at all. The headline that you reference is taken from a Gershwin song "Autumn in New York" ("Why is it so inviting?"). Also, +972 is not a Zionist website. I enjoyed listening to you speak at New York University and was sincere in my admiration for your mastery of colloquial English, as well as your confident manner.

Aside of being a clear-cut case of sycophantic groveling, the note half-states what was an open secret for everyone: +972 is not a Zionist website. The reason I say "half-states" is simple: it is telling only half of the truth, because +972 is openly anti-Zionist, and this is a completely different cup of tea. This here blog is not Zionist (see item 8 of our Charter), but there is a looong way from here to a virulently anti-Israeli rag that calls itself +972 only because some of the failures that claim to be +972 journalists are still responding to phone calls with +972 country code...

So - no need to strain yourself, Lisa, with half-truths, keep them for your articles. We know all about your "non-Zionism", it's fine...

As for that picture above: was there any special need to cover the nose? Possibly after that correspondence with His Excellency?**

(*) Noah Pollack has picked up the snapshot of this remarkable response, you can see it and the conversation that developed, where Lisa is, in her usual combative fashion, hurling incoherent responses, thinly veiled insults and her ultimate adjective - "reactionary" - at some people.

(**) To make sure that the reader receives full information, a comment by Lisa Goldman is copied here:

This popped up in my Google alerts! It is a bit amusing, but mostly absurd. Yan, your entire post is so full of factual errors and inanities that I can't even bother responding. Spluttering over +972 "not a Zionist site"? Of course it's not. It's an independent digital news magazine with lots of different contributors who have different political views. Including Palestinian contributors. It's not the organ of a political party, as Davar was for the Labor party.

But I must correct you regarding the photo. The girl in the photo is not me. She was 12 when I took it (I was 42, so thanks for the compliment), and her surname is Tamimi. I took it in 2010 in her house in Nabi Saleh, a small village near Ramallah. The girl covered her face with a Palestinian flag that was sitting on a chair, to protect her nose and mouth from fumes after Israeli soldiers shot a tear gas canister directly into her living room. You can see the broken glass behind her head. Her younger brothers and cousins were playing in the next room. A year later her older brother Mustafa, died after soldiers shot him in the face at point blank range with a high velocity tear gas canister. You can read more about that here [link omitted - see in the comments].

Now you can see how a person that blames her opponents in being shallow and reactionary clumsily deflects anything thrown at her. First of all, +972 is not Zionist (or anti-Zionist), because a) it is "not the organ of a political party" and b) it has "lots of different contributors who have different political views". And of course, the photograph is a crucial element in the exhibit of "factual errors and inanities"... oh well, this goes for an argument these days in certain circles.

Son of a consummate politician and one of the sharpest minds in Israeli politics, Yosef Burg, little Avrum started from a leftist Peace Now, gradually going over to the left wing of the mainstream Labor party. His self-serving instincts worked hard for him, and his career, peaking at the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency, was meteoric during this period. Albeit already slightly marred by behavior like this:

After his term as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Burg continued to use a car and driver provided by the agency for 10 years.

Strangely (or not), his first major disappointment in and break-up with Zionism comes after his first major political failure: loss in the elections of the Labor Party leadership and his removal from the post of the Knesset Speaker was followed by a revolting article The end of Zionism in the Guardian, where our subject proclaims his final break with the ideology that hitherto served his personal goals just right.

After a row of doomed to failure business ventures, sordid enough to require police involvement, little Avrum (little again, in a political sense) made a few attempts to return to political limelight, each attempt requiring a more extreme and more outrageous anti-Israeli outburst, such as his call on all Israelis who could to obtain foreign citizenship and similar.

The political career was going nowhere, however. And eventually, in 2015, after seeing the demise of his political aspirations, little Avrum (by now politically microscopic) joined the Israeli Hadash party - a mostly communist and mostly Arab gang of anti-Zionist rabble-rousers. The act, mostly symbolic, will lead the gentleman nowhere, being rather a pathetic attempt to get some attention, but more of a full stop at the end of (political) biography. The parabola has come to its end indeed.

Looking at this rather loathsome political biography, one couldn't be surprised when even a perfectly anti-Zionist author of a perfectly anti-Zionist +972, one Yossi Gurvitz asks about Burg:

Has he realized he's politically toxic?

Indeed. And now this politically toxic gentleman uses readily available to him Haaretz pulpit to preach that right now it is... The worst time for Jews to abandon Europe! Imagine that. The anchor statement of the article is, probably, this one:

Even though less than 1.5 million Jews live there, the European Jewish community is no less important than the younger, American and Israeli Jewish communities. Not only because of the thousands of years’ of Jewish history in Europe, or the languages, or the religious and national ties to European culture, but because after hundreds of years of bloodshed, horrible wars and crimes against humanity, after colonialism and religious wars, Europe has done the unbelievable. It destroyed its swords, and became the most important continent in terms of freedoms, reconciliation, equality and secularism.

An insurance company in Belgium refused to insure a Jewish kindergarten, claiming it is too risky amid recent growth of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish institutions across Europe, the European Jewish Association (EJA) said Wednesday.

You can interpret and reinterpret, present and mis-present, but you cannot argue with an actuary of an insurance company, no sir/madam. These folks are not driven by no politics and no sentiments, they use pure ink for blood and they don't lie. Unlike the wayward son of a great man, who is definitely turning in his grave at the sight of this travesty of a heir.

Enough said, only to mention that we here in Israel are grumbling about the property prices steadily raising for a few last years, in good part due to European Jews purchasing flats and houses at a steadily increasing rate. It is not an avalanche yet, but the trend is clear for all to see. Probably these folks didn't read the passionate call by Avrum Burg...

That's it, more or less, dear reader, but not before I pay homage to the unbelievable hardheadedness of Haaretz. The Ynet article about the Belgium insurance company linked above was debunked by the leftist newspaper in an absolutely unique way. The fairly long article No proof Belgian insurer discriminated against Jewish school, watchdog says is an example of a curios mix of political temerity and idiocy. Here is how it starts:

There is no proof that a Belgian insurance company refused to insure a Jewish kindergarten because it was deemed too risky, a Brussels-based watchdog on anti-Semitism said.

Here is the "body of debunking":

“I spoke to Rabbi Margolin,” Rubinfeld wrote about the insurance issue. “He confirmed that the insurance company did not provide a document on the reason for the refusal, which an employee delivered orally.”

So no document equals no proof these days. How quaint... And here is the unforgettable finale:

He also said the kindergarten found a competitor willing to insure it.

So they found a competitor, thus there wasn't a cause for complaint in the first place. Great.

The article in question comes with a becalming picture:

A Belgian paratrooper keeps guard outside a private building in the Jewish area in central city of Antwerp, January 17, 2015.Photo by Reuters

The final proof of validity of your impassioned call, Avrum Burg, ain't it?

05 May 2015

I am writing this with mixed feelings. On one hand, on a personal level, as a man whose hair is steadily becoming a memory and who is soon going over from a comb to a polishing rag, I am feeling for Bibi. But the other hand, the one that strongly dislikes Bibi the politician... oh well, you know the drill here on Simply Jews.

Anyway, that other hand prevails, and it says that the days when Bibi spent inordinate amounts of time (and public money, if Haaretz is to be believed) on careful construction of the pitiful* combover - these days are coming to an end.

Because, what with the limited number of hairs remaining on Bibi's head as it is, even if he tears out only a single one each time when he thinks about his (faulty) reasoning for initiating these wretched last elections, he will be totally bald very soon. Hirsute Lieberman started the process and manfully bald Bennett will bring it to fruition... er... so to say.

Of course, one shouldn't forget that the manual depilation might take more time, after all: the average person's head has up to 150,000 hair follicles (the entire adult body has 5 million). And there is a need for a few more unjustified and purposeless elections to cause Bibi the look of an Alopecia victim.

So, even if the personal level is for Bibi's, all the others can't feel anything but mirth at the thought of the enforced and painful depilation process that is undoubtedly going on as we speak. Oh, and another thought:

03 May 2015

That previous post of mine caused me an urgent need to look up the term "aromantic" that was first misread by me (and at least one other reader) as "aromatic".

The answer appears in an offshoot of Wiki called AVENWiki (?) and is so... so different, shall I say? - that I have no choice but to bring it all here:

An aromantic is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. Where romantic people have an emotional need to be with another person in a romantic relationship, aromantics are often satisfied with friendships and other non-romantic relationships. What distinguishes romantic relationships from a non-romantic relationships can vary diversely, but often includes physical connection (holding hands, cuddling, etc.) The aromantic attribute is usually considered to be innate and not a personal choice, just as the lack of sexual attraction is innate to asexuals. It is important to note that aromantics do not lack emotional/personal connection, but simply have no instinctual need to develop connections of a romantic nature. Aromantics can have needs for just as much empathetic support as romantics, but these needs can be fulfilled in a platonic way.It is possible for an aromantic individual to be involved in, and enjoy, a devoted relationship with another person, but these relations are often closer friendships, naturally reflecting the closeness of the two individuals and not a purposely initiated monogamous separation as is often found in romantic couples. Aromantics may experience squishes which are the aromantic or platonic equivalent of a romantic crush. When an aromatic get's into a relationship that's more than friends - but less than romantic - that is known as a queerplatonic relationship.Like all romantic identities aromatics can be of any sexual orientation.

I have to say that it is not a simple text and should be mentally parsed several times to be understood. Unfortunately, the punchline (see the last sentence in the quote above) destroys your last chance to get an answer to the question asked in the headline.